


Chapter 52: (Different) Choices

by neuxue



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: AU, AU in which Moiraine is Black Ajah, Gen, Moridin shows up because of who I am as a person, So about that Lanfear tag...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 11:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/pseuds/neuxue
Summary: "I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Moiraine had chosen the Shadow. She is so frighteningly competent I could see her rising above Black Ajah and actually becoming a Forsaken despite her limited strength" --Anonymous ask





	Chapter 52: (Different) Choices

_"Would you destroy this world to save a better one?"_  
—Ada Palmer, Too Like The Lightning

"You will do well, Rand."

She did not anticipate the strange tug of sadness that she feels as she meets his eyes and sees the desperate determination there. She turns away then, before he can see anything more in her.

That night she writes a letter, and is pleased to see that her hand remains steady and the words flow almost easily. She folds it carefully, setting a ward on the ink to fade once it is read, knowing the words will burn themselves far more indelibly into his mind and soul than they ever could onto paper. 

She saw glimpses of future in the rings of Rhuidean, glimpses of future and possibility. _A spoonful of hope and a cup of despair._ There were some things that seemed inevitable, as disparate threads wove towards nexuses that remain almost sharp in their clarity, even as the threads themselves have faded from memory lest they overwhelm the present with the possibilities of future. Some inevitabilities, but she will turn destiny to opportunity. _The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills_ , she knows, but there are still choices to be made, and while she has learned the value of surrender, she has never been one to capitulate.

She writes a second letter, and hopes that the research and speculation and observation and hope from the last several weeks is correct. Hopes it is enough. If not…well, if not, the second letter might save her. And if it can't do that, it will hardly matter anyway. The thought is little comfort, but comfort is something she has long since learned to do without.

***

The morning passes almost as if it were a dream, or another vision of myriad futures; time seeming to ebb and flow around her as she anchors herself to reality with her finest silks, pinning the chain of her _kesiera_ carefully into her hair, allowing herself these last moments of silence and order and self.

She spares barely a glance for Asmodean, but she smiles at the sight of Mat, almost wishing she could thank him somehow for the information he has provided despite his best efforts. She hopes it will be enough; there are still pieces missing, still questions unanswered. Not for the first time, she wishes she could somehow have walked through the rings of Rhuidean before stepping through that twisted redstone doorway in the Heart of the Stone of Tear. But now, especially, is no time for regret, so she simply smiles at Mat and offers him praise that will bring him no comfort. He looks at her with an expression of surprise he is still young enough to think he has concealed behind a mask of indifference, and she is surprised to feel a flicker of fondness beneath the satisfaction. 

It is harder to look at Rand. He, too, has begun to build a mask for himself, and though it grows harder every day there is still pain and desperation, fear and despair written across his face for one as well-trained as she to see clearly. But it is the glimmering, tattered fragment of hope still left in his eyes that makes her want to look away as she hands him the letter that will scar his soul. 

_Before I let the Dark One have you, I will destroy you myself._

"You have changed from the boy I first saw outside the Winespring Inn," she says. "You are hardly the same at all. I pray you have changed enough." 

The words land like the blow they are intended to be, but the prayer at least is sincere. She has guided him along this path, watched him take his first steps, but the way will only grow harder. She can only hope that he has gone too far, left too much of himself behind, to turn back now. And so she will use these last moments to push him further, as much as she can; still, her heart almost goes out to him as she watches the play of anguish and regret in his expression before he forces it to calm. 

She pushes affection down and forces her voice to briskness. "Seals ensure privacy. That contains things I wish you to think on; not now; when you have time for thinking." _After. When the words will hurt you the most. When you will feel them to the depths of your heart, for you believe already that the weight of the world rests on you, and you will blame yourself. You will do what you must._ "Now, there is something you must see at the docks." 

"The docks? Moiraine, this morning of all mornings, I've no time for—" he begins, but she turns away, knowing he will follow. This morning of all mornings, when he is already wounded and angry and holding his growing rage by force of fraying will and desperation, he must see. It is time. 

_I could wish you had been less innocent_ , she thinks. _I could wish you had been more heartless, for it is the becoming that is most painful. I could wish you already half-mad when I found you, or else hungry for the power you had already claimed as your own._ Wishes mean little, she knows, but this morning of all mornings she cannot quite silence them. _I could wish you had been unworthy of your inheritance._ The arrogance of Lews Therin would have been easier to betray than the fragile trust of a boy she has come dangerously close to caring for. _Almost, I could believe in you. Almost, I could believe there is a chance_. 

And if he does prevail, despite everything… _The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills._ Moiraine accepted long ago that she is an instrument of greater powers, that even as humankind plays its own games, there is a far greater one being played in which they are merely pieces. But where so many seem to struggle with that last surrender, she knows it does not belittle their choices. She will play her part, and which hand guides her in the end… 

" _I see you understand_ ," the figure from her dreams had said. " _Do you know how unusual that makes you? The rest think only of ruling the world or of saving it, when they stop to think at all. Thus are the battle lines drawn, and they never see how meaningless it is._ " 

She disagreed with him only on _meaningless_ ; she would have said _limited_. But she said nothing; what comfort could she offer to one who had looked ahead and behind, into the endless cycles of time, and known that his destiny is to be thrown willing or unwilling into a war he must always lose. The world continuing, sustained by the lives and sanity and heart of the Dragon and the Betrayer, again and again and again, while humankind hates and condemns them both and yet begs them to return, again and again and again. There are no clean hands; existence itself is bought with the lives of heroes and the souls of villains, unending and unacknowledged sacrifice. 

Rand al'Thor has already offered himself as a sacrifice, and what is left of Elan Morin Tedronai has accepted his role, but perhaps they can be the last. They, and the world that has reaped and reaped but never sown, that has done nothing with these gifts but turn them against each other and then demand salvation time and again. 

It is too limited a scope, to let the worthy ones sacrifice themselves to save a generation or an Age or a world. But the sacrifice of a world…that could buy something far greater, in the hands of those who play that greatest of games. It is a strange hope, that for the price of oblivion they could let a new world be born someday, a world in the image of chaos or order or choice or something else entirely, a world that could be worse or better or never exist at all. But it is a hope nonetheless, and one stronger than the hope of a new Age bought with a brief moment of unity and the promise of renewed battle; a new Age in which everything would be remade but nothing would be different. 

_I could wish it were not necessary._ She could wish those greater forces would grant humankind one last chance. But that is a wish she cannot afford if she is to do what must be done. 

*** 

"What is it you want me to see, Moiraine?" Rand's voice breaks into her thoughts as they reach the wagons, and her eyes go instinctively to the redstone doorway. 

Lanfear emerges enraged from one of the wagons, and the next moments pass in an eternity and no time at all. 

She has seen this in infinite variation and perfect clarity, as if there was never any other path. Or as if all possible paths led to this moment. And from here they diverge once more, along strands of future she can no longer remember except as faint impressions, paler than dream. But this moment now, this is memory come to life, memory and past and present and future pulling inexorably together, holding her in place and dragging her forward, tearing at her mind and falling perfectly into place. 

Lanfear screams, but Moiraine barely hears. Her eyes are fixed on memory, on future, on dream; on everything and nothing. On the woman before her, and the knowledge of what must follow. 

For an instant, the possibilities scatter before her, infinite futures she almost remembers, infinite choices. For an instant, she is frozen, knowing that the moment she chooses one path, the others will collapse into nothingness, entire worlds dying in the space of a breath. 

She lifts her skirts and runs. 

A blur of motion at her side—Lan is there, as ever, and she cannot stop the anguished cry that escapes her. "No, Lan!" Too many ties, but no time now for regret. Lan is thrown back by a wall spun of Air, and she does not hesitate even for an instant, and it feels like a betrayal. 

Then a whip of Air catches her as well, too fast for her to even begin a weave to counter, and she is drawn inexorably towards Lanfear. She lets the Forsaken—the Chosen—see a glimmer of her fear, burying the calm certainty of her choice beneath it. 

And then she is falling, hurled back, the ground rising up to meet her— 

She could not have lost consciousness for more than a second, but awareness returns in a wash of pain, and the heat of nearby fire, and the sound of screaming. Pain is the price she must pay to remain unnoticed a few moments longer. Pain, she can endure. Disoriented, she pushes herself slowly to her knees beside a wagon. Power floods the air around her, flames of _saidar_ curling against invisible walls of _saidin_ , and all of it pierced through with the sounds of anguish and anger. Lanfear's rage and Rand's desperation and Egwene… _oh, Egwene, I could wish this were not your fate_. The girl who could be magnificent should have been born in a kinder time, but a kinder time would have left her unshaped, unhoned, untried. Moiraine allows herself to hope, just for a moment, that Egwene survives this. That Egwene, with the fire of her ambition and the stubborn ferocity of her will, finds some answer Moiraine never could. For a moment, Moiraine allows herself to believe this girl can dream them all a world that does not require the ashes of this one. 

"Pain, Lews Therin," Lanfear cries, and Moiraine bites back a gasp as she sees the weaves that spin across her vision. Blades of agony, sharp severing edges. Killing edges. And beneath them, Rand is laughing. 

Wiping the blood from her mouth, Moiraine pushes herself unsteadily to her feet, Rand's laughter still ringing through the chaos of fire and Power and pain. She has stood here before—in memory, in future, in dream—and she knows there is no more time. 

In spite of herself, her eyes dart over to where Lan lies barely moving, perhaps trying to find strength to rise, perhaps dying. He will curse her for this, mourn her for this. It is a bitter irony; he has long sought oblivion, and she has long denied it to him. And now she has anchored him to life, as she goes to seek the world's end. He has always believed she held him back from his personal war with the Shadow to spare him for some greater purpose, never guessing the truth: she has held him back all these years not for his own sake but because she knows that if any man could strike a truly crippling blow, it would be Lan. He would die in the attempt, but he could bring the Blight down around him as he did, and the death of the Age would only be dragged out longer, into years or even decades more of slow collapse and sacrifice. She has spared the world that. And she has spared him that lonely death; his last stand will not be alone. 

_Goodbye, my old friend,_ she thinks. _I hope you find some happiness before the end._

She turns back to Lanfear, to the wretched sounds of Rand's laughter, and the sight hits her like a blow. Lanfear standing on the wagonbed, blazing bright as the sun with _saidar_ , framed by the twisted redstone _ter'angreal_ as she stares down at Rand, a pitiless smile on her lips, a bracelet held in her hands. There is no more time. Rand is on his knees, laughing with tears streaming down his face, bowed beneath the weaves of pain. If the madness has him… 

_Before I let the Dark One have you, I will destroy you myself_. The words echo again in her memory, a truth amongst the deceptions. She has set that course, set him on the path of his own self-destruction. By the time the Shadow claims him there will be little left of Rand al'Thor to resist. He has chosen the path of sacrifice, and now the greater powers in their eternal game will determine its shape, and its reward. 

But he cannot be allowed to die now. Not yet, not like this. She tells herself it is nothing more than necessity that draws her forward, slowly, still as if in a dream. 

Her weight does not disturb the wagon at all as she pulls herself up, and Lanfear does not look around; she has all but forgotten Moiraine, discounted her as little more than an annoyance, and her attention is fixed on the tide of _saidar_ she is throwing against the boy kneeling before her. 

Suppressing a brief flash of hope—she cannot allow herself such a luxury—Moiraine embraces the True Source and throws herself at Lanfear, clawing the bracelet away. Face to face, they fall through the _ter'angreal_ , and white light swallows them whole. 

***

They emerge together on the other side of pain, falling a few paces apart onto the glassy floor of a huge star-shaped chamber full of thick fluted columns. 

"Say nothing," Moiraine says the instant she hits the ground, half a breath before Lanfear shouts " _You!_ What have you done?!" 

Moiraine pushes herself up quickly, her eyes darting around the room, hoping desperately she has correctly interpreted the few writings she has found of this place. The rings of Rhuidean showed her nothing beyond the doorframe; more than once she has wondered if they cannot reach beyond her world. 

Lanfear recovers almost as quickly, glaring death at Moiraine and— 

Lanfear's eyes narrow, and Moiraine's breath catches. She had been sure the Chosen was about to embrace _saidar_ , to incinerate Moiraine where she stands. But as Moiraine opens herself to the True Source, she understands the flicker of uncertainty in Lanfear's eyes. She can feel the Source—almost. But it is like reaching through a shield; open herself though she might, she cannot touch _saidar_. It calls to her, just out of reach. 

Even so, Lanfear only hesitates for a second before she throws herself bodily at Moiraine, reaching as if to rake Moiraine's face. Moiraine holds her hands up almost desperately, her fingers flickering a sign shown to her by a dark figure in a darker dream. Lanfear steps back as if Moiraine struck her. 

"No," she whispers, horrified astonishment turning to livid fury in her expression. "No," she says again, louder, "he wouldn't dare—" 

"So soon," comes a voice from the shadows, and both women freeze, turning to look in the direction of the voice. It seems to come from several places at once, and it takes Moiraine a moment to notice the figure stepping out from the forest of columns, its movements graceful and inhuman. Two others follow behind it, both appearing as if out of nowhere, all three carrying bronze-bladed spears and wearing harnesses and vests of a pale leather Moiraine wishes she did not know the origins of. 

The Eelfinn. She had half-expected them to be less unnerving, after her visit to the realm of their cousins the Aelfinn. She knows now how foolish a thought that was; they are like and yet entirely unlike the snakelike Aelfinn, their faces sharper, foxlike, almost feral, almost vicious. Or not 'almost'. She can only hope she has understood and guessed at their rules correctly; they obey strange laws here, but they do obey. And years of being bound by bone-deep Oaths have taught her to understand the sorts of bindings that rule here. At least, so she prays. 

"So soon," one of the figures says; perhaps the same one that spoke before, perhaps another. 

"A long time, and then so soon," another says, perhaps simultaneously. It is difficult even to distinguish their voices, and the dialect of the Old Tongue they speak is like that of the Aelfinn, old enough and strange enough to be almost incomprehensible to Moiraine's court-trained ears. 

"Two together; that has not come to pass in a long, long time." 

"Yet the agreement is clear." 

Moiraine hardly dares to breathe, as the three figures turn to face her and Lanfear, and ask in one voice, "Do you abide by the treaties and agreements? Do you carry iron, or instruments of music, or devices for making light?" 

"No," Moiraine whispers, as Lanfear tosses the word at them scornfully. But Moiraine notices that she has not moved either. Either she knows something of this place, and knows it is only safe to defy so far, or…or she knows as little as Moiraine. It is too much to hope that she knows less, but Be'lal and Asmodean proved that the Chosen are not infallible. They are fallible, and now they are fewer. Moiraine pushes that thought aside; she must survive this first. 

"Then follow." 

One of the foxlike figures stands between Moiraine and Lanfear; Moiraine never even saw him move. She takes a deep breath as she follows behind the other two Eelfinn, the third keeping pace between her and Lanfear so that she cannot catch a glimpse of the Chosen's face. 

She finds that she is more prepared for the way the corridors angle and the doorways all show the same view than she was for the Eelfinn themselves; she is not entirely unfamiliar with places that seem to follow no natural laws of the world she knows. The _ter'angreal_ that test Accepted and Aes Sedai, and the Ways, and even more recently…dreams. The hallways are unsettling, but it is a familiar sort of unsettling, and she calms her mind by repeating careful translations and even more careful requests to herself, word by word, turning each word over to be certain of its myriad possible meanings. She will have only one chance at this; she cannot afford a mistake now. Lanfear speaks from time to time, demands and then threats, but Moiraine barely listens. She herself does not dare to speak, lest anything she say be interpreted as a request. 

"You _will_ honour my requests," Lanfear says angrily, cutting into Moiraine's thoughts. 

"We follow the order of precedence," the figure between them says, not slowing, and Moiraine forces down a flash of relief. She is still not certain, not yet. 

After time uncountable—minutes? hours? days?—they emerge into another star-shaped chamber, this one tall and open, with eight pedestals at each point of a star in place of columns. A flash of white catches her eye and she turns; Lanfear stands beside her now, and there is no sign of their guide. Of any of their guides. She fights to suppress a sense of rising fear at the realisation that she is alone in a strange chamber—alone in a strange world—with one of the Chosen, and this time it is no dream, this time she was not summoned. This time she pulled them both through a doorway and through agony, away from Lanfear's vengeance, and now— 

There is a figure sitting on each of the pedestals. Moiraine thanks her many years of training and practice as Aes Sedai for the ability to keep surprise from her features. Lanfear's face betrays no more than her own. 

"By the ancient treaty," one or many begin, "here is agreement made. By the terms of the agreement, the first to speak is the first acknowledged. What is your need? Speak." 

Lanfear's expression can be described only as triumph, as she steps forward, regal and furious, and manages to address all eight figures at once while only looking at the one in front of her. "I demand that you—" 

"By the terms of the agreement," the figure repeats, looking past her to Moiraine, "the first to speak is the first acknowledged." Moiraine turns in a slow circle; all eight of the figures' eyes are fixed on her. Lanfear, too, has spun to fix her with a look of utter fury, sharp enough to burn even without the power of _saidar_ behind it. Moiraine meets her eyes with every scrap of serenity she can muster, drawn from reserves deep within her. 

"She is irrelevant," Lanfear snarls, "and _I_ was the first to speak." 

"She spoke first," comes a voice from one of the eight waiting figures. 

"She spoke the moment she touched our world," says another. 

"'Say nothing', she said," a third affirms, with an odd inflection that might be humour or might be something else entirely. "We watch, we remember. The treaty is clear. She speaks first. What is your need?" 

For the second time, Lanfear moves towards Moiraine, murder in her eyes. Before she can take more than a step, one of the Eelfinn—one of the guides?—stands behind her, pinning her arms by her sides with his own, holding his spear across her chest. Lanfear's face contorts with rage as she struggles to fight her way free, but the one who holds her seems hardly to acknowledge her. Moiraine shivers at the inhuman display of strength, and at the wild fury in Lanfear's eyes. 

But she has guessed correctly. Their rules are as absolute as the Oaths, as binding and as literal. As open to exploitation. She spoke first, and they will listen to her requests. More dangerously, for their rules are as absolute and as literal as the Oaths, they will _grant_ her requests. 

"Speak." 

"I wish to be granted the full knowledge and memories of this woman who stands beside me," she begins, speaking as clearly and carefully as she can manage. Almost before the words have left her mouth, Lanfear throws back her head and screams, but the Eelfinn take no notice. 

"Done." 

Moiraine takes a deep breath, rehearsing the words one last time in her mind, knowing she must speak them without hesitation and knowing, too, that Lanfear will do everything in her power to stop her. She wraps herself in all the serenity of Aes Sedai and all the certainty of her path and all the ruthlessness of Cairhien. 

"I wish for this woman who stands beside me now to be held here in my place. I offer this as payment" 

In the stillness of her own mind, she hardly hears Lanfear scream, a scream not of fury this time but of anguish, of agony, of desperation. One of the Chosen stands beside her and begs, and Moiraine takes no notice. 

"Done," says one, as the others peer at her inscrutably. She knows the risk she is taking, setting no payment first, but even with the guide restraining Lanfear, even if she had known he would, she knows the Forsaken would never let her make her requests if she had bargained Lanfear's life and freedom away first. Now, she has only to hope that it will be enough. If not…she has one more payment she can offer. 

"I wish to be returned to my world, with my mind and self and gifts intact." 

That they will notice the omission, she is certain. That they will know it is deliberate, a part of her request rather than an offer, she does not know. Nor does she know if it will matter. 

"Wise to ask leavetaking, when you pay with a price not yours," says one. 

"The gift is acknowledged, but a price must be paid." 

She can no longer tell if one is speaking, or all; their words seem to overlap and intertwine, pouring over her, benediction or condemnation or both. 

"What was asked will be given." 

"The price will be paid." 

Darkness swallows her whole. 

*** 

She opens herself to _saidar_ before she even opens her eyes, and the light flows through her like relief, banishing her fears. She is free of the world beyond the doorway, and _saidar_ is still hers to touch. Lanfear is nowhere to be seen, but there is a pressure in her mind that is almost pain. Her mind. Her…she reaches a hand to her head, and reaches for her name. Mier—no. She reaches again and memory floods her, a hundred years, two hundred, three…and then darkness. The darkness consumes her, pulls her down, surrounds her, threatens to annihilate her even as she struggles against it, tries to push it down, tries to claw her way out of memory, but there is nothing but more darkness, three thousand years of darkness, dragging her deeper, deeper, deeper… 

As both hope and desperation fade, she surrenders to the darkness, to the memory, to something beyond either. And light fills her, _saidar_ fills her, and memory subsides until she is submerged but no longer drowning. _Moiraine._ She is Moiraine, and she is free, and in her mind is Mierin. 

_And the price?_ She opens her eyes, lifts her hand. A hand. She smiles then, and confirms her suspicions and her hopes by drawing a lock of silvery hair over shoulders that are the wrong shape. Mind and self and abilities intact, she asked the Eelfinn, and trusted them to claim the price of her body. 

She looks up then, and realises for the first time that she is not alone. A figure cloaked in darkness stands several paces away, watching her as though waiting. She stands and meets his gaze and does not flinch or look away, as the silence stretches between them like a final test. 

Finally, as though at some signal or some decision reached, or perhaps simply on a whim, he nods once, with the barest hint of an expression that might be amusement, or might be interest, or might be no more than the play of shadow across his face. 

"What will you call yourself?" 

She knows his voice, knows his face as he steps closer. She knew him even shrouded in shadow. From her dreams or from her memories of the futures now consigned to nothingness, she can no longer tell, but it does not matter. Soon time will be broken, and with no future there can be no despair, with no past there can be no regret, and all will be consumed in dream. 

"Cyndane." 

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit is due: some dialogue and a few sentences of description are lifted from the scene at the docks in Chapter 52 of The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan. 
> 
> The quote at the beginning is actually very lightly paraphrased - the exact phrasing is implied but never outright stated in the form of a direct question (though the inverse is).
> 
> There are no doubt some canon-compliance issues, especially with the Eelfinn, because I'm _still_ not finished with the series. Yes this bothers me. But it's AU so just...go with it.
> 
> Comments are moderated purely to avoid spoilers; all non-spoiler comments are more than welcome!


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